Contrary to popular belief, Amazon does not require that you’ve bought a book in order to review it. It does ask that you mention in your review if you haven’t, explaining how you came across it (usually with a simple “a copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review” statement at the end).

This myth is based on the fact that Amazon does require that you’ve bought at least one physical item from its shops before you’re allowed to place a review. This is to verify that you’re an actual human, with a valid physical address, instead of a robot, a troll or a spammer. Here’s the story from the horse’s mouth, as reported by Jackie Weger, who contacted Amazon with that very question:

“Yes, you may send the reviewers a copy of the original format of the eBook for example, MOBI, DOC, among others. I do want to let you know that this is at the publisher’s own risk and Amazon is not liable for any files that are sent, or the reviews given to the book if they meet our reviews guidelines. You may also “Gift” a Kindle book to those reviewers so that it can be downloaded to the reviewer’s Kindle device, or Kindle application. Furthermore, regarding any contest (or for example a raffle), we’ll take this as gifting as well, so all the above will apply if Authors decide to perform this market strategy. The tools, such as ‘Rafflecopter’, that could be used for this will also be under the Author’s personal choosing and responsibility of use.”

Now that’s been cleared, how can one go around securing these elusive reviews?

Jackie’s Advice

In her post, What Reviewers Want, Jackie Weger suggests that authors add the following line at the very end of their book:

Thank you for taking time to read [title]. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.

Examples of people using this little trick to great effect include Mazie Baby, which drew above 300 reviews within weeks of the book coming off a promotion, and Pineapple Lies, a new 2015 release by Amy Vansant, with 270 reviews after its very first promotion. Jackie has also posted a couple of guest posts to present the reviewers’ point of view. They are both very useful:

“Two promotion sites that have made it onto eNovel’s Above the Fold list are booktastik andBettyBookFreaks. Here is why: On a recent ten author/5 day tour. Dionne of booktastik promoted the tour on her site for free all five days. Dionne has also started streaming promotion results for transparency. That is the GOLD Standard.

Betty ofBettyBookFreaks grabbed our posts and was a Tweeting Wizard for our tour and promotion. They pay-it forward. We love ’em.

BookBarbarian has just made it to our Preferred list for Sci-fi and Fantasy. $8 for promotion and BookBarbarian streams results. Transparency. So has BookScream – which sends the author an indepth activity on a book promotion. These all are smaller sites with fewer subscribers, but the owners are doing it right.”

Book Reviewer Yellow Pages And More

My friend MMJaye posted an excellent resource the other day on the subject. The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages, now in its 6th edition, is a huge list of bloggers and reviewers (of all genres) listed alphabetically, which also specifies which genres the particular reviewer accepts.

Romance authors may also enlist the help of Tome Tender, a blog specializing in the genre. Strangely enough, they also review fantasy. Author Zed Amadeo also posted recently a great selection of review resources. He lists four of them in particular:

How to Get a Truckload of Book Reviews by Penny C. Sansevieri

This companion to How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload (you can read Zed’s review here) provides details on how to craft a pitch to send to bloggers who review books in your genre and how to ask readers to write a review.

In addition, Sansevieri’s guide suggests ways to tweak your site to make it easier for potential reviewers to find your book and how to run book giveaways.

How to Get Good Reviews on Amazon by Theo Rogers

How to Get Good Reviews on Amazon explains how to find reviewers of your genre on Amazon.com, while also providing illuminating information on the review culture as a whole and possible pitfalls to avoid when trying to get your book reviewed.

Reviewperstar by Buck Flogging

Reviewperstar: 12 Tasteful Ways to Get More Book Reviews describes how to utilize your email list to encourage subscribers to review your book.

This is a helpful resource for authors who already have a sizable audience, whether from blogging or previous publishing experience.

You may remember Rayne Hall from my author feature. Or, you may have met her on Twitter, her preferred medium. She has literally written the book on the best ways to use Twitter – it’s called “Twitter for Writers” and is part of her celebrated Writer’s Craft series.

In November 2015, she had a terribly flattering suggestion for me. She told me she was writing a new book, this time on getting book reviews. She then asked me for a guest chapter. Naturally, I was happy to oblige, and the book was published a few days ago.

More Resources

You can find out more about the Book Reviewer Yellow Pages, including information on the paid version, on MMJaye’s blog. She also shared this great tip:

“Another way that worked for me was to use Goodreads to track reviewers of books that have the same trope or branding as mine (romances with a Greek setting or a Greek alpha male). After checking out their reviews (you don’t want to approach the snarky, over-criticizing ones) I messaged them, and most responded favorably. I got seven reviewers from one batch of messages this way.”

As for crime writers, they’re in luck. As author Sue Coletta let us know, “A crime writer who’s spent thousands testing each site shares her spreadsheet at Murder Lab.”

“Whenever i review a book ( I am also a professional reviewer for publishing houses that mail me best sellers to review) the author almost always reads my book without my asking and writes a review. So for almost every review I write I get one in return.”

101 Comments

Wow. To think I almost missed this post. An excellent resource for crime…a crime writer who’s spent thousands testing each site shares her spreadsheet at Murder Lab: http://www.murderlab.com. Incidentally, she does mention other genres too, but concentrates on crime.

Thanks for sharing all that, very helpful! I read Christoph Fischer’s post about his reviews getting removed, and it’s a rather stark reminder that being exclusive to Amazon can really turn against you. Whether as a reader or as a writer!

It just occurred to me to mention this. I bought Christoph’s book, ‘In Search Of A Revolution’ as a download. I haven’t read it yet, so not reviewed it. No doubt I will be ‘guilty by association’ when I eventually submit the review. But to hell with that!
Best wishes, Pete.

Wonderful resources here. I’m looking for reviewers for my short stories on Amazon. Anybody know reviewers who do short stories? With so many Kindle Singles out there, you’d think reviewers might like quick reads to review but I’m having trouble finding reviewers for my Kindle Singles.

Thanks for another very insightful post, Nicholas. As a reviewer, it is always helpful to try to understand what authors are going through when they reach out for reviews so I can be more empathetic of their needs. With the proliferation of both indie writers needing reviews and book review blogs being inundated with requests, we all know misunderstandings and hurt feelings are going to happen, but I’d rather keep mine to a minimum, and posts like this give me the resources to try to do that.

Oh, man, I’m so out of the loop lately!! I had no idea Christoph was going through this. Damn. I’ll have to shoot over there next. Thanks for including the link so I can get up to speed.

All these excellent resources, Nicholas! You’re fabulous!! So, what’s the verdict, anyway, does “the author gave me a copy for an honest review” still work? Because I’m reviewing a free book now for someone’s launch. Crazy, right? All of a sudden publishers’ PR dept started sending me free books left and right after reading my reviews on Goodreads. Go figure. Problem is, I don’t want to become known as a “book reviewer”. I’ll never get any work done. Ah well, that’s a problem for another day.

I’ve read one or two of these. It also takes some serious investigative work and some conscientious effort on the authors part. What they did to Christoph Fischer’s was wrong on so many levels. So many people, book reviewers and bloggers, reach those numbers. I’m hoping he can somehow get them restored.

I read of Christoph Fischer’s situation with his reviews, which was the first i have heard of this issue.
This is a great post (again) by the way, Nicholas. If you’re not careful, i could find myself populating my blog with reblogs of yours. – joking, just really great posts!

In my experience as a fledgling indie author over the past six months or so, review blogs are one of two possible types: too big to even respond to a query, or so small that they are suspect as actual review blogs vs. people who just want free books. Thank you for these resources!

Did somebody report his reviews or was it unprovoked? I’ve heard that people who take the review rankings very seriously will try to get the ‘competition’ banned by reporting. Claiming someone was paid for a review is a big thing right now.

A great post. You may be interested to know that a colleague who had put on a review for me, Amazon took it off, saying she was a friend. I challenged Amazon saying I only met her once a month at a writing group – I didn’t know, anything about her personal life, and they put tyhe review back on.

Almost two years ago, I had my eyes opened to some of the issues concerning Amazon reviews. As well as the criticism of Amazon using automated systems to detect ‘friends’ there is a veritable industry of negative reviewing out there that we all need to be aware of. I wrote this post at the time.https://beetleypete.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/reviewingthe-truth/
Best wishes, Pete.

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